We develop a stakeholder framework that examines how firms respond to the conflicting demands that arise from governments and investors in the context of corporate philanthropic giving. We argue that firms that experience such conflict exhibit a decoupling response in philanthropic giving. Furthermore, we identify the boundary conditions of the relationship between the conflicting pressures and the decoupling response. Drawing on stakeholder salience literature, we argue that this relationship will be weakened when CEOs perceive government demands as more salient (such as those with a communist ideology) and when CEOs are less sensitive to investor claims (such as those with fewer career concerns). We find empirical support for our arguments using a sample of 8,857 Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2015. Our study contributes to the literature on stakeholder theory, decoupling, and corporate philanthropy.

Using a sample of Chinese family firms during the period of 2004–2010, we examine the influence of media coverage on corporate philanthropic giving and the moderating role of family ownership. Specifically, we document that media coverage is significantly positively associated with corporate philanthropic giving, suggesting that media coverage as an informal system plays an important role in motivating Chinese family firms to establish business ethics, shape socially responsible images, and enhance corporate philanthropy. Moreover, family ownership attenuates the positive association between media coverage and corporate philanthropic giving. Our findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between media coverage and corporate philanthropy. Our study is one of few studies to investigate the impact of media coverage on corporate philanthropic giving in an emerging market.